Brenda's Business Advice

If you want to launch a jewellery hire business that allows people to rent pieces of high-end jewellery to wear to special events, the advice below might be of use to you.

Find a local and reliable jewellery repair specialist

When you set up this enterprise, you should locate a jewellery repair professional who operates their business in an area that is fairly close to your premises. This is because the jewellery pieces that you loan to your customers will occasionally be returned in poor condition. Customers may, for example, accidentally scratch, scuff or even completely destroy items during the rental period. Any damage that your jewellery pieces sustain as a result of your customers' carelessness must be fully rectified, as soon as these items are returned to your premises. If it is not, your customer base will rapidly shrink, as people will simply not be interested in renting, for example, bracelets with broken links or gemstone earrings that are badly scratched.

As such, you will need to have access to the services of a local jewellery repair specialist who can quickly resolve any damage that your customers inflict on your jewellery products, no matter what was done to them. This way, you can start renting out these items again to new people within a few days of them being returned.

Ensure that at least one of your employees is an expert in jewellery valuation

When you set up this kind of enterprise, it is absolutely critical to ensure that at least one of your staff members has extensive experience in jewellery valuation. This is because if you loan highly valuable jewellery pieces out to random members of the public, there is a risk that some of these people might attempt to return a cheap replica of the item they hired rather than the actual one that you lent them, with the intention of either keeping or selling the piece they have.

As such, the staff member who accepts the items returned by your customers must be knowledgeable enough about jewellery to be able to distinguish between, for example, real and fake diamonds, or gold-plated and solid gold jewellery. This will ensure that should any of your customers attempt to return a cheap replica of the jewellery they rented from you, this staff member will realise that the item being returned is a fake and can then notify you or the authorities.